Troy McGeorge, a member of the selection committee that helped choose William Fleming’s Athletic Hall of Fame, Class of 2010, recalls what may have been the heyday of Colonels athletics: at one point in the 1950s the captains of the football, men’s basketball and track teams all were Fleming graduates. “We had three different committees [making the decision],” said McGeorge of the first group, announced last week.
William Fleming High School’s inaugural Hall of Fame class will be honored before the September 3 football game at the school’s new on-campus stadium. The 10-person class includes those that made their mark on the athletic field, or as a coach.
The William Fleming Booster Club and a Hall of Fame selection committee asked the local community to send in nominations; those chosen date back to long time football coach Fred Smith (1938-1967) and all three of the campuses in Roanoke City that Fleming called home.
A former baseball and football player for the Colonels, McGeorge expects to see more nominations from the community before next year’s class is selected. “People will be like, ‘hey, so and so didn’t get in, this person didn’t get in.’ We expect more in the next few years.”
Among those chosen for the Class of 2010 are Lee Suggs and John St. Clair, both of whom played in the NFL (St. Clair is still playing with the Cleveland Browns) and Charlene Curtis, a basketball standout who then coached at Radford and Wake Forest. Suggs is now an assistant football coach in Ohio and won’t be able to attend. Knee injuries cut his professional career short. St Clair is “99 percent positive” he can make it on September 3, according to McGeorge.
George Miller coached the Colonels to a football title game in the late ’90s, Don Divers became a football star at Virginia Tech and Lynn Agee was also a basketball coach. She’s now in the college ranks at UNC-Greensboro.
Honorees will be cited in a display outside the main gym at Fleming. McGeorge said just about every 2010 class member will try to attend on September 3, or send a family member (Smith is deceased.) “This is a great class and it covers each decade also,” added McGeorge, Class of 1986. The initial group “was very honored. It should have been done a long time ago.”
William Fleming’s Athletic Hall of Fame, Class of 2010
Fred Smith – Coach – 1938-1967
R. Donald Divers – student athlete – Class of 1953
Benjamin Barnett – student athlete – Class of 1986
Charlene Curtis – student athlete – Class of 1972
Robert Crenshaw – student athlete – Class of 1964
John St. Clair – student athlete – Class of 1995
Robert Wingfield – student athlete – Class of 1953
George Miller – student athlete & coach – Class of 1970
Lee Suggs – student athlete – Class of 1998
Lynne Agee – student athlete and coach – Class of 1967